Keto for Pet Health with Daniel Schulof | KCL31

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Episode Description: 

Today Carole talks with Daniel Schulof of KetoNatural Pet Foods about how living a healthy life can benefit our pets and scandals and dirty tricks from the pet food industry. If you love your pets, don’t miss this!

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Transcript:

Carole Freeman:

Hey, we’re live everybody. Are you an animal lover? Do you have any four-legged furry friends that struggle with obesity or other health problems? Do you ever wonder which pet food is really the healthiest for your fur babies? I forgot to turn my phone on silent. Oh, that’s terrible. That’s a terrible show host etiquette. That’s terrible. All right. Hey, everybody, this episode is for you. Stick around, learn all about how low carb diet may be the answer for your pet’s health concern. We’ll explain the benefits of keto for pet health. So welcome. Welcome everyone to Keto Chat Live. I’m your host, Carole Freeman. I have a master’s degree in nutrition and clinical health psychology. I’m also a board certified keto nutrition specialist. And that means I got to give you a medical disclaimer, because we want to make sure people don’t just go out and do crazy stuff after they hear this episode.

Carole Freeman:

But this show is meant for educational entertainment purposes only. It’s not medical advice or intended to diagnose, prevent, treat, or cure any condition at all. If you have questions or concerns related to your specific medical conditions or in this case, your pet’s medical conditions, please seek out proper licensed medical professional and get the help that you really need. So everyone, I’m so excited today because I have a very special guest, Daniel Schulof of KetoNatural Pets. He’s going to explain how good keto for pet health is. Welcome to the show.

Daniel Schulof:

Thank you, Carole Freeman. It is a pleasure to be here. Thank you for having me. I’m looking forward to bring in the small animal perspective on all the typical keto matters that I’m sure you guys love to talk about. Essentially keto for pet health.

Carole Freeman:

So great. Yeah. Everyone, if they’re wondering, I am not at the beach. It just looks more beautiful to have your hair blowing in the wind though, right? No. It’s-

Daniel Schulof:

I wouldn’t know.

Carole Freeman:

I’m here in Phoenix and we’ve got a rainstorm that’s rolling in tonight. And so it’s, the humidity is pulling up a little bit, which is weird because normally we don’t have any humidity here. You’re in Utah. Right? Daniel?

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah. I’m dead north of you. I’m in Salt Lake City, Utah, where we’re having our first snowstorm of the year. So it might be the same storm system. But yeah, it’s a little bit chill here-

Carole Freeman:

It must be. Before I did this work, I didn’t realize how much of the weather system hits the entire country at the same time. It’s very weird. I’ve got clients and coaches all across the country and some of them reported that in … Was it Iowa, Michigan? I don’t know. Someplace in the middle of the country, they had snow last night as well. And so Phoenix gets 69 degrees in rain and the rest of you have to deal with-

Daniel Schulof:

Oh my God, are you guys going to make it? 60s, good grief, you must be melting down you guys-

Carole Freeman:

It’s sweatshirt weather. It’s like, I’m going to wear boots out the house tonight. It’s serious. It’s pretty tragic here.

Daniel Schulof:

Unbelievable.

Carole Freeman:

Well, for those of you watching … Oh gosh, where’s the live people, but we’ll just do this anyways. True or false, the pet food you get from your veterinarian is scientifically formulated to be the best and the healthiest diet you can feed your pet. So if you’re watching us later, we get a lot of people on the rerun, the repeat. That’s dating myself, right? Daniel, you know what a rerun is, right?

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah, of course.

Carole Freeman:

The replay. The modern kids call it the replay, but us older people call it a rerun. If you’re watching the rerun of this show, go ahead. Still, participate in the comments. If we do have somebody watching live, please join the show. We love to have interactions, so let us know just where you’re joining from. I can see who it is as soon as you make a comment. And also, just for fun, true or false. Type a T or an F in the comments there if you believe that that food that you see there at your veterinarian’s office is scientifically created to be the healthiest for your pet. Well, Daniel is going to tell us all about that later. All right. Welcome, again, Daniel. So this is me meeting you for the first time. So share with me, how did you get interested in this crazy keto diet thing? Why keto for pet health?

Daniel Schulof:

I spent four years writing a book about the problem of … primarily about the problem of obesity among pets in the Western world.

Carole Freeman:

Okay.

Daniel Schulof:

And the theses that I put forward in the book are, one is a scientific … I’m pulling my finger away from this camera. One is a scientific thesis, one is a cultural one. One is, contra to the mainstream veterinary dogma, the real root of the obesity problem among dogs and cats in the Western world is dietary carbohydrate, which is the backbone of the modern-day pet food. That’s the science portion of the book. It’s this big fat book and half of it is this study says this and this study says that, et cetera. The other half is, well, the case is so clear. As you said, this is what all the studies say. And if you think they’re persuasive in the world of people, they are shockingly so in the world of dogs. No deviation from the finding that like in isocaloric diets, low carb will always wind up with a leaner dog.That’s why keto for pet health is beneficial to so many dogs.

Daniel Schulof:

But second half of the book is basically, so why don’t all the vets think this already? And the answer there is essentially that large pet food companies, the very same folks who use carbohydrate as the backbone of the ecosystem, play a huge role in influencing the community. And because of how small and insular the veterinary medical community is, it’s totally realistic that you can develop financial relationships with literally every single one of the veterinary nutritionist in the country. And so you have this super weird case where textbooks just leave out a series of six studies in a row. The whole field of veterinary nutrition is small.

Daniel Schulof:

Imagine whatever feels like the most obscure human nutrition little sub domain you can think of. It’s a tiny fraction of that. It is absolutely minuscule. And the amount of research that gets published is tiny. Any veterinary nutritionist knows everything that’s coming out. They are all over it. There are only so many journals. They know how good keto for pet health is. And all this stuff just gets left out. This eye-popping persuasive stuff. And why? Well, because everything from writing the textbooks to own the labs that employ the nutritionist to everything like that. And so I found it a captivating story. And so literally, I mean, like I said, I spent years working on it, just following the story. And then it was so interesting, I made a company out of it.

Carole Freeman:

Daniel, there’s something missing in this story though. What compelled you to write a book about pet food in the first place?

Daniel Schulof:

I got a dog. I mean, I basically … So-

Carole Freeman:

You got to give us the heartwarming version of this story. Where’s the feeling and the-

Daniel Schulof:

It is heartwarming. It is also hard for me to tell because the dog that kick-started this journey, that was a character, the motivating emotional force in the book. My book is written as me going about. So it’s my story. And my best friend for 13 years passed away in February of last year and so it’s bitter sweet for me. That said, this dog that I got, when I got him at eight weeks old, was this charming little puppy. And then grew to be 100 pounds, super legit male Rottweiler by the time he’s one year old. This was, gosh, I guess circa 2007, something like that. I’m an attorney by training and I practiced law in the city of Atlanta for six years. And I was practicing still when I got this dog.

Daniel Schulof:

I’ve been raised with dogs, but I had never had one that was my own. Super proud of him, great dog. I was single and we were just like roommates and it was fantastic. And if any of your listeners or anybody you know has a Rottweiler, then they know that you need to give that dog exercise just to make it a polite member of society. You have to. If not a legal issue, you would certainly have a management issue in your home if you are not getting that dog physically exhausted every day. And all the more so when you’re a young attorney working in some law firm that’s like, oh my God. Obscene amount of work. So I grew very interested in trying to do that well and do that efficiently. So it fit within my lifestyle.

Daniel Schulof:

How do I exhaust this dog every day, most effectively? What does the literature say about it? And that’s when I started reading the facts about the obesity problem among pets in the Western world, like in pets in America. And they are eye-popping. They’re just like, I couldn’t believe my eyes. One, there’s a few nutshell facts that you just can’t talk about this problem without talking about. And all these are very mainstream topics. There’s nothing counterculture or fringy about any of this, but nonetheless. Number one, more than half of the dogs and cats … I see you’re a cat person, in America today are overweight or obese. So if you just-

Carole Freeman:

This is queue time to bring up my little fellow that’s sitting behind me here. He’s going to make noise. He doesn’t want me to pick him up, but this is my nearly 18-year-old.

Daniel Schulof:

That is absurd, 18 years old.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah.

Daniel Schulof:

What is his name?

Carole Freeman:

This is Blue, by his eyes. Let’s see if I can get him to …

Daniel Schulof:

Oh, yeah. That’s good.

Carole Freeman:

See his little bow tie. So he has a sister that’s sleeping somewhere. And their whole lives, I knew to feed them grain-free. I’ve had them almost 18 years, longer than I’ve been doing low carb myself. But I knew even back then that to be the healthiest weight and I have the best health outcomes, to feed them a grain-free diet. And they’ve always been normal weight. I’ve always been able to free feed them. I don’t know if you feel the same way or not, but I think that the only reason that you have to restrict feeding for pets is because you’re feeding them a high carbohydrate food. Now, I think the exception is pugs. I’ve seen pugs that will just eat an entire stick of butter. They have no off switch. So I think there are some exceptions. But I think for most pets, if you feed them a low carb diet or a species appropriate diet, which is not high carb for cats or dogs, that they naturally regulate their appetite.

Daniel Schulof:

Look, I mean, I have to respond to that kind of specific issue. I’m in full agreement and there’s tons of interesting stuff about that specific thing. Nobody’s ever done the study, can you make a dog or a cat obese without carbohydrate? Is it possible for that to happen? No one’s ever done it. I go around all the time and I say, that’s an impossible thing to do, because I don’t believe you could do it. And the reason that I know that there’s at least … I know how the physiology, the bio of how obesity works in dogs and cats. And it’s very similar to what you, I’m sure, talk about all the time on your show in the world of people. All the biochemical nuts and bolts are the same. The insulin, glucose and fat tissues, all exactly the same. Not exactly, but it maps very nicely. That’s why keto for pet health makes sense.

Carole Freeman:

Well, just the insatiable appetite and hunger that comes from being obesogenic state. Like when your body is constantly storing fat, all you have available is high carb foods. This is for humans too. You’re constantly hungry, you can’t get the fat to come out for energy, so you’re constantly hungry. So I feel so bad for these people putting their cats on diet food. I see this more in cats than in dogs, but it’s the same with dogs. Then you got to give them this tiny little portion and then they’re starving until the next feeding time. And these poor little pets, I feel so bad for them. It’s like, if you just change their diet, they wouldn’t have that issue. That’s why keto for pet health is useful when people don’t want their pets to be obese but don’t want to starve their pets either just to prevent it.

Daniel Schulof:

The way I framed my book was, one of the very first things that I do when I go out on this is I went to Yellowstone National Park. In Yellowstone National Park, you have a group of biologists who form this organization that is called the Yellowstone Wolf Project. It’s a publicly funded organization and it’s effectively the premier place in the United States for the study of wolves in their natural habitat. Wolves aren’t a very popular species. These days you can find them in a few places in the country, Yellowstone National Park is one of them. So you got this whole big group of biologists that publish basically all the important ecology like wolf ecology work.

Carole Freeman:

I love that you brought that up. My early ancestors on my dad’s side were some of the earliest settlers of Yellowstone.

Daniel Schulof:

Oh, cool.

Carole Freeman:

I think it’s my third or fourth great-grandfather-

Daniel Schulof:

A descendant of wolf.

Carole Freeman:

… owned the park hotel that’s there at the outside of Yellowstone.

Daniel Schulof:

Oh, very cool-

Carole Freeman:

I get to watch that series, but I should do that soon. So-

Daniel Schulof:

I’ve been there so many times to do just … go to Yellowstone. But only once did I go and stay with the folks who run this organization. And the reason you go there is because dogs and wolves are incredibly genetically similar animals. They’re so similar. They can breed with one another, which is how biologists often think about two species being distinct. Can’t breed is one of them. Dogs and wolves can, they are incredibly similar. But in terms of how those genes express themselves in the modern world, they couldn’t be more different. Literally 0.0% obesity among wolves. And this is in wild settings and in zoos, captive settings. Very low chronic disease incidence rates in the same kind of way.

Daniel Schulof:

The reason it made a good place for me to go at the beginning of the book is there’s this dichotomy, how do we explain this same genes, totally different outcome. And it frames the book. We want to know how wolves eat. A wolf will eat roughly 10% of its body weight each time it eats. The expression, wolf it down, comes from the fact that when you take down a huge ungulate of elk or moose, there’s an obscene amount of meat and the pack goes bananas for it right away. And these animals consume 10, 12, 15 pounds of meat in one short-ish, not over a period of a week, in one sitting.

Carole Freeman:

I’m doing the math for myself right now. About how much I’d eat in that same scenario.

Daniel Schulof:

Come on, think about it.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah.

Daniel Schulof:

Think of one pound steak. It is a big deal to eat a one pound steak if you are me.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. And Daniel, I just want to comment on how some of the nutrition teaching I had was, well, the answer to not eating too much is just to chew your food 20 times every bite.

Daniel Schulof:

That’s important.

Carole Freeman:

These wolves don’t need anybody, no, no, no, slow down, you’re going to get fat if you eat your food too fast wolves.

Daniel Schulof:

Think of how implausible it would be to try to get that precisely right. They eat this one massive meal, then don’t eat again for 12 days or something like that. And it’s like, so the idea is they’re just calibrating that meal exactly right to make it so that over a period … It’s completely absurd.

Carole Freeman:

You know what is going to start because of this, it’s going to be the wolf intermittent fasting diet. [crosstalk 00:16:18]. 2020, mark my words everyone. They’re going to be like, okay, 10% of your weight. You eat once every 12 days.

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah. Oh, okay. Yeah. Good. I see what you’re saying. A human version of it.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah.

Daniel Schulof:

There’s-

Carole Freeman:

They’re always looking for the answer. Low carb can’t be the answer, so it must be the timing of the feeding. So we’re going to do the wolf diet. I’m going to write a book on this, I’m going to make a million dollars next year. The wolf fasting method. But anyways back to keto for pet health.

Daniel Schulof:

[crosstalk 00:16:47]. Yeah. So, I mean, it probably goes without saying, but wolves obvious … It was obvious to me and someone out there, they eat a diet that’s 0.0% carbohydrate. One of the very few things that makes them marginally different from dogs is they can’t digest carbohydrate very well. The dog/wolf split genetically occurred right around the development of agriculture as a phenomenon. And a lot of the other things that make dogs and wolves two distinct species are the brain. Differences that make a wolf a wild animal and a dog a trainable, domesticable type thing. And you can imagine how that, right at the same time that reliance on a food system is based around carbohydrate come around right together and you end up having two different lineages. It makes tons of sense to me. But anyway, modern-day wolves can barely digest carbohydrate, don’t eat any of it. They eat these 18 pound meals. They never get fat. They never get cancer essentially. And it just makes for a compelling question of how good keto for pet health is. And so, yeah-

Carole Freeman:

And we welcome our viewers. If you’re watching us live, go ahead and share in the comments. Do you have a pet? What kind of pet do you have? Are you ready to try keto for pet health? We want to make sure that you’re welcome in the show and you’re participating too. So let us know you’re here. I can see that we have live viewers. I can’t see who it is until you actually comment though. So give us a comment, let us know you’re here and join the show. So I want to ask you too, so wild animals, especially wolves, so is it true that they actually go more for the organs or they go in … So I know that when part of how domesticated dogs evolved because they were companions to humans and then humans fed them the parts of the animals that the humans didn’t really eat.

Carole Freeman:

And from what I understand, it was like they were given more the lean parts of the meat. So whereas right now, most humans will think that the lean part of the animals are the healthy part. Whereas back 200 years ago, we were more likely to eat the high fat parts of the animal. And then what I had been told was that we cast off the lean protein part to the dog. Is that what your research shows or what parts of the animal do the wolves eat?

Daniel Schulof:

So a few things. Three things to note about what it looks like, the order of progress when a wolf pack takes down a big ungulate, like an elk. The delicacy, the first thing if you find it in the kill is inborn fetus.

Carole Freeman:

Oh.

Daniel Schulof:

It’s like something goes, oh. I know, it sounds absurd.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. Okay.

Daniel Schulof:

But it makes sense too because there are, as you know from talking about keto diets with people, there’s a great deal of difference in micronutrient content, depending on what kinds of tissues are consumed. And if you can imagine, a fetus, you’re getting essentially everything that’s going to be. The folks, they’ll tell you, that’s always the first thing to go. Beyond that, the way that the animal is consumed is essentially, the entire thing goes. And you’ll come upon, if a kill has been picked over for a period of a week, there’s almost nothing left. The hide is gone, for instance. What’s left is, there are two things. One is bones that are too big to be broken. There are just some things like a big pelvis bone from a moose. It’s like, that’s not going down. And then the other thing is the rumen. The contents of the rumen.

Daniel Schulof:

The rumen is that organ that an elk uses to turn plant matter into energy and it’s [crosstalk 00:20:29]. And they just have, at any given point, this big wad of plant matter in their stomach or what amounts to a stomach. And wolves will eat the entire lining around this wad of carbohydrate content. You come upon this kill and it’s basically like white, massive bones and big fat. And so what you’re getting is you absolutely are consuming all of these very particularly micronutrient rich internal organs, along with the skeletal muscle tissue that more commonly makes up the stuff that humans are eating today, or however many years ago the stories that you’re hearing are based on. I never heard that kind of specific thing. When folks used to raise dogs before, kibble was very popular, they’d feed them primarily table scraps. There’s no doubt about that. Whether they were feeding, it stands to reason. I’ve never heard that before, but it stands to reason.

Carole Freeman:

There was also stories about how early European settlers to the US actually would eat dogs. This is not even related to what we should feed our pets. I was in Oregon. I grew up in Oregon actually. And there was some Louis and Clark. It was at a park where they were doing reenactments of early settlers. So they had, in character, people that were acting this out and I was asking them … because they stay in character when you ask them questions as if they’re in the time period. And asking them about what their relationship were with early dogs, because there were people there at the park with their dogs. They were like, actually we liked to consume them. So not fun, not that pet lovers even like to think about that. But that was more 1800s where they started actually [crosstalk 00:22:23].

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah. I mean, the phenomenon where human beings develop emotional attachment to specific animals is all grounded. The dominant theory of psychology around this is like, it’s grounded in some hijacking of an instinct that arose in some other type of place that forced other type of reason. That you had these emotions that bonded you to your children or other people in your community. And that you have this animal around that is doing certain similar-ish behaviors and you develop this emotional bond as a result of that. But yeah, there are plenty of places in the world where that’s not developed and there’s nothing in the modern world where that doesn’t develop. And you have people who don’t feel any degree of squeamishness around that subject. That’s why we get people who love their pets so much that they would try keto for pet health and then we get people who do things that seem pretty taboo for pet lovers like us.

Carole Freeman:

I have cats. I love dogs, just to be clear. I’ve had many dogs in my lifetime. I live in an apartment now. And especially in Phoenix, I don’t … I feel like if I’m going to have a dog, I want to have it in some area that they can go run. Just to be clear for people watching [crosstalk 00:23:28].

Daniel Schulof:

I have a St. Bernard who would melt if he lived in … Right now, it’s 69 degrees. It would be too much for him.

Carole Freeman:

So Daniel, so apparently your backstory is that you ended up leaving your work as a lawyer to create this dog food company and encourage keto for pet health. So how did that all come about?

Daniel Schulof:

Well, I left it to work on the book full time basically.

Carole Freeman:

Okay.

Daniel Schulof:

I found out, okay, half the dogs in America are overweight or obese. The next dog you see on the street is more likely than not to be overweight or obese. That’s super weird in and of itself. Second fact that punches you about obesity among pets is that it’s worse for them than a lifetime of smoking is for a human being. Obviously they live shorter lives than we do, but on a percentage basis, if your dog is moderately overweight, it’s equivalent to you being a smoker for your entire life. Which is something that is so well, duh, that’s very unhealthy. If you’re going to do that, you’re rolling the dice with your health. And this is something that is half the dogs in this country. And it’s like, we’ve never before, there’s never been a single moment in time where we’ve spent more on veterinary care, when the veterinary medical profession had more people in it, or as more ostensibly well developed. How could those things, those three facts, all coexist? That’s what got me interested in like, there has to be a story here. And this-

Carole Freeman:

I mean, cats and dogs are sometimes in the same boat with this. It’s like, how many of them have diabetes? And like-

Daniel Schulof:

Oh, it’s different.

Carole Freeman:

… medication and-

Daniel Schulof:

Oh, it’s absurd. Canine diabetes, that was not a thing that existed not too long ago. The type one, type two typology doesn’t exactly line up. But no developmental form of diabetes, there was nothing other than what dogs were born with. It was not a thing. And now it’s an actual thing. And the textbooks are having to be rewritten to reclassify this disease. It doesn’t function just like type two, but it’s a very common thing. I mean, now if I fast forward 12 years or whatever it’s been since I started the book, like you said, I started a dog food company. And a huge chunk of what we do, our business is people whose dogs have diabetes, because we sell low carb dog food that promotes keto for pet health. And the standard of care if your dog has diabetes, the prescription only food is 40% digestible carbohydrate.

Carole Freeman:

Which is low carb compared to what regular dog food is right? [crosstalk 00:26:02].

Daniel Schulof:

And it’s just like, archival is less than 5% carbohydrates. So dogs switch over to it and it’s like the blood glucose and insulin numbers are completely different right off the bat. That’s what a keto for pet health diet can do. It’s night and day. The degree to which the veterinary community, they’re not even hip to that as an idea is staggering. But anyway, yeah. All these other disease are shockingly common. I focus on obesity in the book, but all these other chronic noncommunicable diseases that can’t be explained other than by some kind of environmental or cultural type of phenomenon. They’re not getting transmitted like … Oh, we have to be careful how we talk about whatever the pandemic that’s going on. It’s non transmittable diseases and yet they become epidemics. So anyway, how does that happen? That’s the story I tried to answer in the book. And it led to my personal discovery of keto for pet health.

Daniel Schulof:

I originally was doing it as a side project and the scale of the project just got bigger and bigger. And it’s just like, oh man, there’s a whole story here and nobody’s told it. I could tell you, there are plenty of folks that are doing great keto podcasts like yours focused on human nutrition. There are no people doing dog focused keto podcasts or keto for pet health podcasts in general at all. Gary Taubes became a friend as I was working on my book and he inspired me a lot of the work that I did. But since he published his big books, I mean, how many hundreds have been written about various keto diet strategies? I still am really the only serious book in the dogie world that talks about keto for pet health. So at that time it was just like, oh, there’s such a story here and nobody’s told it. I have a duty to do this right. And I was a single guy that had saved up money that had the intellectual hubris that you get from being a lawyer at a high level. And I took it on and that’s where it went.

Carole Freeman:

How do we break through though? Because I remember a friend of mine that his cats were having kidney issues. And so then the vet put him on … I won’t name specific names, but the brand you get at your vet’s office that was the kidney formula. And it wasn’t very long after that, then the cat passed away of this issue. And I said, perhaps a grain-free diet instead of a keto for pet health diet right away. That’s just the baby step into low carb and eventually into a keto for pet health diet. A grain-free diet for your cat would be optimal. No, no, no, no, my vet has this under control. My vet has recommended this specific dietary formula from this specific brand. Why would I listen to you? You are a human nutritionist, what would you know about helping a cat not have kidney issues? Why is keto for pet health even a thing? So how do we break through when people … Humans have the same issue where it’s like, no, my doctor is managing my diabetes for me. I can’t do this low carb thing. It’s the same thing. We’re trained to listen to the vet as knowing what’s best for our pets. How do you answer that?

Daniel Schulof:

So how do you solve that is a complicated question, where there are a lot of things we’ll need to change slowly over time. Things that are currently, the deck is stacked against. I wholeheartedly, with every fiber my being, believe that I am right. That we are right about the relevant scientific issue.

Carole Freeman:

Well, all you get to see is you put a sick or overweight animal on this diet and then it reverses very quickly, same with humans. So keto for pet health makes sense.

Daniel Schulof:

I mean, that is persuasive. Don’t get me wrong. But that’s subject to the argument of like, oh, well, this is anecdotal. There are a dozen different studies where doctors have done this exact, effectively the same experiment. Where they take two groups of animals, either dogs or cats, and give them exactly the same number of calories. Doing isocaloric feeding trials in human beings is hard, right?

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. Oh, this is fun. Okay, I can’t wait to hear this.

Daniel Schulof:

Dogs and cats are super easy. You just put them in tunnels and it’s like you know exactly how many calories they are eating. You don’t need a metabolic war. Every single time that that experiment has been done, you get the exact same outcome. Which is, the group that gets less carbohydrate but the exact same number of calories as the high carb group ends up the lean group. And when they do it and really flip the numbers, they get absurd. You get like six times different in terms of fat gain or fat loss, just by swapping one calorie of protein for one calorie of carbohydrate. Exactly the same number of calories.

Carole Freeman:

Wow.

Daniel Schulof:

And it’s not a cherry picked … I’m not characterizing that. I mean, at this point you have to take me at my word, but you can read it in the book and catalog where I go with it. But it’s been done more than a half dozen, almost a dozen different times. Not once has there been anything other than that finding.

Carole Freeman:

Wow.

Daniel Schulof:

Where it’s like, same calories, one gets low carbs, they end up lean. You can’t believe in the practice of science, you can’t believe in the relevance of experimental evidence and say that that’s wrong. And yet, that is a completely fringe position in the modern veterinary community. So the issue of, how do you solve it? The issue of how to explain that to somebody is one thing. It’s like, there are some people whose way of thinking about whether something is true or false. In the age that we live in as we do this Facebook live thing, is the problem of information versus misinformation and what constitutes what and how do we think about what’s true and what isn’t. It’s so fascinating to me. It’s just such an interesting time for it. But there are plenty of people, rightly or wrongly, whose way of dealing with an issue that they don’t yet understand is to say effectively, find authority that they trust and go with what that person says. Plenty of people, smarter people than us.So a concept like keto for pet health gets shut down when they listen to their vets and close their minds.

Daniel Schulof:

And for some of those people, their position of trust when it comes to veterinary nutritional matters is they are the veterinarian that treats their dog. And how do you break through that? You are going to struggle. You’re going to have to get a veterinarian that is willing to engage with you and your argument on the evidence. Otherwise, you can’t win them all right now with the idea of keto for pet health. Long term, how do you change the fact that the veterinary community views this as a fringe position? Oh, well, that’s my life’s work basically. And don’t let my hair fool you, I’m barely 40 years old. I’ve got plenty of good years ahead of me. And there’s a regulatory element, there is a legal element, there is a generational change in the veterinary community element where rising vets can be exposed to different information. So that all you see is all there is phenomenon is less … So there’s a million thing.

Daniel Schulof:

But it’s sad there’s going to be a lot of animals that live considerably shorter lives than they ought to as that period of time goes by before the veterinary community accepts keto for pet health. You just cut me off when it feels like I’m talking too much, because I know I talk so much. But let me tell you one fact, in the United States, when the surgeon general’s report on the health effects of smoking came out in the mid 1950s. When the surgeon general stood up in front of the country effectively and said, this stuff gives you cancer, we see it. The highest health authority in the United States. Smoking rates began to decline in earnest when? In the mid 1980s. About 30 years needed to pass between the time that the top health official announced that we figured it out and people started to actually change as a result of it. That’s how long indoctrinated contra industry change takes. It just is just, you’re fighting against big, very well stuck in and well financed bodies, and you got to keep fighting to promote ideas such as keto for pet health.

Carole Freeman:

It takes a long time to turn the ship around. [crosstalk 00:34:06]. That’s what we know. Yeah.

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah.

Carole Freeman:

Welcome to the show. Those of you who are just joining us, give us a comment, let me know you’re here, join the show. Welcome. I said that and one number dropped off. They’re like, no, I don’t want to be seen. So what do you think of that? There was a documentary that came out, I don’t know what, a couple of years ago, the Pet Fooled.

Daniel Schulof:

Kohl Harrington. Yeah. One thing he did recently [inaudible 00:34:34], he’s putting out the documentary. He does the thing he calls Pet Schooled.

Carole Freeman:

Okay.

Daniel Schulof:

Now, Pet Fooled is a tutorial program where he brings in folks who are what he perceives to be experts on various issues to talk to pet owners about stuff. And he had me do the obesity one. And so, yeah-

Carole Freeman:

Wow, that’s great.

Daniel Schulof:

Well, he does all kinds of good work. That was the last time I worked with him professionally. We touch base because we’re just running in a lot of the same circles. But yeah, there’s-

Carole Freeman:

My mom watched the movie Pet Fooled and then switched to making all of her own pet food for her dog. She was essentially converted into the keto for pet health idea. So [crosstalk 00:35:14]. Robin, “Hi, I’m sorry. What’s the topic?” The topic is keto diets for pets and keto for pet health. So Robin, do you have any pets? Are you willing to try keto for pet health. Glad you’re here. Thanks for commenting to see you’re here.

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. So my mom does … Yeah, so she does all homemade chicken turkey. She does a little bit-

Daniel Schulof:

Here’s the nutshell pitch on that. Obviously, if you do that yourself, if you have unlimited time and patience and money resources, you can put together something that’s really, really good for your dog as a matter of health. It’s personalized keto for pet health. You can put together something truly, truly great. But it’s not easy, because there are … I mean, we were talking earlier about micronutrients and consumption of organs and things like that. There are all kinds of things that the veterinary nutrition community knows really well at this point will develop into deficiency diseases if they’re not consumed in sufficient quantities over time. And they’re not weird things and they’re not really weird diseases, but there are a cluster of them. And it’s easy. That is definitely a real thing, that you can screw that up if you don’t be thoughtful about it ahead of time. But yeah, something like that is close to the gold standard and it’s a totally realistic possibility. I mean, people do it all the time. It’s tough. It’s harder. It’s easy. What kind of dog does she have?

Carole Freeman:

She loves purebred chocolate labs.

Daniel Schulof:

Okay. That’s about as big as you hear for that kind of thing. Because what I was going to say is, if you have a little dog, it’s manageable. You know what I mean? It’s like the amount of meat you’re buying and the amount of disinfection that needs to go on and all that stuff is like, you could just about get your head around it. I have a St. Bernard and my girlfriend has two other large dogs and it’s just like, it becomes mind-boggling.

Carole Freeman:

Well, if you got to feed them 12% of their body weight or 10% … What did you say? 10 or 15% of their body weight every 12 days.

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah. So I didn’t-

Carole Freeman:

Welcome to the show, Phyllis. Phyllis says she uses Visionary.

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah. Basically-

Carole Freeman:

Do you have any comments on that?

Daniel Schulof:

Yes I do. I haven’t talked about KetoNatural at all.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. KetoNatural is Daniel’s company. He does keto for pet health foods.

Daniel Schulof:

That’s right. That’s the pet food company that I founded after publishing the book. We are all about keto for pet health. And we were the first company to come out and make a truly low carb kibble for dogs. Everything at the time we found it, the lowest you could find anywhere in the market was 30%. Ours is less than 5%. A couple of years after we came along, a second company called Visionary that have been making raw foods previously rolled out their low carb, truly very low carb forward kibble. And right now we’re the only two standing on an island that are embracing this issue. We’re the only ones doing keto for pet health. There are differences between our product. Primarily, we’re a much higher protein and lower fat product. If you’re trying to put your dog into as maximally ketotic state as possible, one of the things that you can do is try … like in people, is rely more on fat intake than even protein intake. If you’re looking to try keto for pet health, you can try our line of dog foods.

Daniel Schulof:

And the Visionary product does something like that. On the other hand, if you want to mimic the dog’s ancestral diet more effectively, which is basically feed it like a wolf eats, you want to feed a much higher protein content than fat content. Because as you can imagine, wolves eating animals like elk and bison, it’s not exactly … So that’s the main difference. We are higher protein, lower fat, they are higher fat, lower protein. But in the grand scheme of kibble, we’re very similar and the rest of the world is on a whole different planet.

Carole Freeman:

Phyllis, share with us how … I imagine it’s a dog. Then, Phyllis, share with us how your dog is doing. Have you always had it on this food or is it something where they were unhealthy and you had them switch over to this? When did you become open to keto for pet health? Tell us more of your story there. So Robin, are you cooking your own food for your dog? Chicken, turkey, cauliflower.

Daniel Schulof:

I like it.

Carole Freeman:

Tell us more about that. And yeah, from what I understand, dogs tend to do better with lower fat than what humans will do. Is that what you’re basing your formula on, or?

Daniel Schulof:

Well, there are a few things. One is, the don’t mess with mother nature argument is the most persuasive argument to me when it comes to any single scientific topic. And the best way to do that is to feed it a diet that’s very similar. So the one the wolves are still eating today, which is 60% protein. Ours is 50% protein, which is the highest protein you can find anywhere in the kibble world. That’s point number one. The second is, another major … it’s hard to call it a chronic disease really, but it’s something that every dog will encounter as it ages, is age related muscle wasting. What’s called sarcopenia. It’s a huge problem among pets. And it’s basically-

Carole Freeman:

Did you call it barcopenia?

Daniel Schulof:

Ha-ha, very funny. I did not. No. Very good.

Carole Freeman:

It’s a sad disease and I had to make a joke. Sorry.

Daniel Schulof:

Very good. No, no, no. Look, you’re a pro for a reason. So anyway, the only way to combat that is basically to use the muscles a lot and make sure that you take in enough protein to stall the protein turnover with different places you age. And so that’s a huge thing as well. It’s one of the reasons keto for pet health can work. I believe greatly in simplifying the issue, that muscle mass is medicine and fat is kind of like poison, body fat. And so the leaner you can be. There’s just a literally 100-page section in my book that’s like, what is an optimal body composition for a dog? A very simple summary of the answer is, you really can’t be too lean. The leaner, the better. So I recommend keto for pet health to achieve this.

Carole Freeman:

Okay. Interesting.

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah. I mean, essentially, the muscle is medicine, fat is poison type thing holds within the data that looks at, which of these body compositions tends to live the longest, tends to avoid chronic disease the best?

Carole Freeman:

Okay.

Daniel Schulof:

It’s not what you will find. When I talk about the problem of obesity among pets, if you use that kind of model where you say the leaner, the better, it kind of screws up the whole concept of overweight and obesity. Because it implies there’s a healthy, perfect middle ground. It implies the U-shape curve where you’re too lean, then you get to the perfect place for health. And then above that is what we call overweight or obese. Whereas if the relationship is really the leaner, the better, it’s just a single upward slipping line. That said-

Carole Freeman:

Robin, what kind of pets do you have? Dogs, I’m assuming. But also, this is how smart that Facebook is. Because Robin originally said, “What’s the topic?” But Facebook knew Robin had a dog. So Facebook told Robin about this live stream. So thank you Facebook for sharing with people that have pets here, but also Phyllis as well. They know Phyllis has a dog too. So …

Daniel Schulof:

I think what I was saying is that the veterinary community will tell you that the best … that basically what is mainstream is the U-shape curve. Where a reasonable amount of fat, but not too much is what’s best for your dog. That is not what the evidence reflects. And so it’s not what I tend to push people for. And so if you really want a dog that’s nice and lean and healthy in that way, it’s got a lot of muscle mass on it and that’s a protein thing, not a fat thing.

Carole Freeman:

The leaner a dog, doesn’t it make him hungrier? Aren’t they [crosstalk 00:43:02] all the time.

Daniel Schulof:

I’m summarizing 100-page section of my book.

Carole Freeman:

Okay.

Daniel Schulof:

You before, you yourself said that hunger and desire to eat aren’t related necessarily to the … those are things that have to do with the nutritional composition. So first of all. But I would say-

Carole Freeman:

Well, there can be a state though. Like if you’re very underfed, like anorexic, you’re going to be hungry no matter what the composition of the food. But-

Daniel Schulof:

And so the two caveats to the leaner is better is number one, if you start losing muscle mass. So leaner is better, but thinner is not better. And so if you can watch the animals beginning to lose muscle mass, that’s an indication that it’s become too lean.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah.

Daniel Schulof:

And then the other is reflected in energy. Basically, if you notice energy changes, loss of energy, lethargy, that is also a signal that the animal is under fat and its body is trying to conserve that by like it’s reflected in the energy change. [crosstalk 00:44:05]. That is not a practical thing to worry about. You know what I mean?

Carole Freeman:

Okay. Especially if they’re eating that high of a protein diet, they’re going to have plenty of muscle mass.

Daniel Schulof:

Well, yes. But I just mean, the flawed, in my eyes, model of overweight and obesity by even that standard, half the dogs in America are overweight that. And it’s like, the number of dogs out there that are truly very, very, very lean is just [inaudible 00:44:40].

Carole Freeman:

So in the goal of getting your dog jacked and ripped, low carb, and then do you do little doggy weight training? [crosstalk 00:44:50].

Daniel Schulof:

I have a short exercise, something that deals with muscle in the book. And if you think about it, you probably get it. I mean, the principles that govern whether or not you’re gaining muscle mass are the same that apply to you and I. But obviously, the tools of it are going to look a little different for something without opposable thumbs. But it’s basically load up the lever with more resistance than it would ordinarily encounter and make it work through the resistance anyway. And so-

Carole Freeman:

Looks like dogs like to pull on stuff, bite something and pull. Yeah.

Daniel Schulof:

Sure. Like my Rottweiler, God rests his soul, what we would do is … I kept recounting in the book, this crazy thing. It’s like jumping exercises. He just had like a get the ball obsession and we would just have this weird dance behavior essentially, where it’s like the effect was box jumps at a CrossFit gym where the dog is just repetitively jumping as high as it can for a 22nd burst of time.

Carole Freeman:

Doggy CrossFit.

Daniel Schulof:

Kind of running [crosstalk 00:46:04].

Carole Freeman:

Good story. She used natural neutral brand. I actually, early in my cat’s life, I used neutral. And then I realized how many carbs were in it. And she heard about Visionary. We live next to a dog park and I saw my dog running or slowing down, running and playing. He’s about eight years old, Australian Shepherd. Had really good results with that. So [crosstalk 00:46:30]. Yeah, eight years dog is pretty young still. They should still be active and healthy at that age.

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah. What is normal in the context of it’s common in today’s age and what should be normal approach with you using common sense are not the same thing. There’s a matter of conventional wisdom in doggy world that says that the larger the dog is, the shorter its lifespan should be, and the earlier it starts to drop off. And I adopted my St. Bernard, Nash, when he was five. And he’s a full, proper St. Bernard. And he’s 10 now and he is a maniac. He is a prop, he is a maniac-

Carole Freeman:

That’s great.

Daniel Schulof:

… he is jacked. The way I would describe it to people … I can’t use the bad light. I kid you not. I kid you not. When I got him the first few years as a seven-year-old dog, he moves … you can think of a little dog that is just agile enough to spin really hard and jump and run really low to the ground. When they get going fast and they are low and just a horizontal back, that is how that dog moves. And it’s just like, you turn on a dog show and you look at the dogs that win the Westminster dog, the St. Bernards that win the best breed at the Westminster Dog Show and it’s not the same kind of thing. It is not a model of functional beauty, it is very different.

Carole Freeman:

They should have the zoomies. Right?

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah. That’s exactly what I’m describing. That’s me trying to put elements around one perfect capture. Yes, the zoomies.

Carole Freeman:

Zoomies. A St. Bernard with zoomies. That’s great.

Daniel Schulof:

I mean, 100%. Chasing his own tail. For real, yeah it would be great.

Carole Freeman:

Well, it’s like when people go on keto themselves and then they get that zoomies energy themselves and they’re like, oh my gosh. They just feel so much better. And my cats will be 18 in March coming up and people are really like, oh my gosh, they’re so old. But they still got a lot of life left in them. You said earlier there’s a reason why you don’t do cat food, you only do dog food. Tell me, because I’m like, I need this for my cats.

Daniel Schulof:

Absolutely. So building a startup is hard. And basically I’m sure it’s a lot like building a startup community, building a startup consumer products company is hard. And you’re competing with these massive established things. And one of the-

Carole Freeman:

So you just picked because you had dogs. You started with dogs because you love dogs.

Daniel Schulof:

I mean, that is what got me into the topic. But now that we run a business, there’s a subtle thing that’s like, it’s just unfortunate, but true. We have to pinch every penny. We have to think about, how much are we paying to reach each new potential person? Are they exactly the right person for us? How much does your cat weigh?

Carole Freeman:

All right. Oh, so dogs eat more than cats.

Daniel Schulof:

My St. Bernard weighs 150 pounds.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah. Mine are about, they are around seven pounds each. They’re healthy lean.

Daniel Schulof:

So my dog has to eat 20 times what your cat has to eat. So for me, we have a great quarter if we can knock down the cost it takes to bring each new person in the door by 10%. You know what I mean?
Carole Freeman:
I’ll get more cats if that’ll help get me more cat food. [crosstalk 00:50:03]. If I get 10 cats, will you start cat food for me?

Daniel Schulof:

This is not a long term thing. It’s just like, I have a company that’s been around for three years, four years. And so as a matter of sequencing, anytime you see … if you look around, poke around other pet food companies … I think it’s the case with Visionary, for instance. When they start, they start with dogs, reach a certain critical mass, and then can offer products for all the … There’s just as many cat owners as dog owners, but the economics are just completely different. And so-

Carole Freeman:

Yeah, makes sense. Makes sense.

Daniel Schulof:

Well, in a lot of cases, the amount of difference nutritionally between a product built for, marketed for dogs and one marketed for cats is pretty darn small. The nutritional requirements have important distinctions between what a cat absolutely requires and a dog doesn’t absolutely require. There are differences, but seven or eight out of 10 pet food products hit both. I’m not going out there saying you should feed your cat ketona or flagship product. But I will tell you that it is not the case that there are fewer than 10 of our customers that are feeding it to cats right now. It’s like a common-ish thing.

Carole Freeman:

Okay. So are nutrient needs similar enough that it-

Daniel Schulof:

Yes. That’s what I’m saying.

Carole Freeman:

Okay.

Daniel Schulof:

There’s more overlap than difference. It’s not like a herbivore, whatever, like a grass grazing animal and a wolf. It’s like, the main one that you hear about all the time that’s real is that cats cannot synthesize this amino acid called taurine. The same that’s found in meat products. Dogs, if you give them other amino acids will make it themselves. So cat food needs to include taurine. Regular taurine. If you want to sell it in the US, it’s got to contain taurine.

Carole Freeman:

I see, okay.

Daniel Schulof:

Dog food, there’s a big hullaballoo going on right now that’s like, oh shoot, maybe we were wrong the whole time about the dog taurine thing. But that’s a big distinction. And so that’s why you have to be careful. Many dog food products contain plenty of taurine, it’s found in meat. Our product is 80% meat. But plenty of companies are sneaking a lot of their protein content from soy or other plant source. If you do, you can put a cat’s life at danger. [crosstalk 00:52:37] assume that you can feed either way.

Carole Freeman:

Well, that makes sense. It’s like, any animal has amino acid needs. And if you eat enough high quality protein, you can meet that need.

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah, exactly.

Carole Freeman:

But if you’re eating a 80% carbohydrate diet, you’re not getting enough protein in general, then you need to supplement with these amino acids. So it makes sense why traditional cat food then needs to have added taurine, because it doesn’t have enough protein in general so they can get the taurine-

Daniel Schulof:

Exactly. All of it. So much of what comes to constitute the nutritional contents of pet food is around these minimum requirements that have been put into the regulatory system. And so, so many of these products, it’s about barely making it and then just framing it as something that feels healthy.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah.

Daniel Schulof:

But the reality is that the delta between what is the regulatory required minimum amount of protein and the amount that a garden variety wolf eats is like a 3X. You know what I mean?

Carole Freeman:

Yeah.

Daniel Schulof:

It’s a completely different way of eating. It’s an obscene situation that has produced obscene results. The results are, they defy all common sense when you see how unhealthy these animals are. But you come to see how much … There’s a big story there and you should check out my book if you want to understand any kind of serious detail. Kohl’s movie is great too. I think it’s a great movie.

Carole Freeman:

Here is another question for you. How often does your dog need to go get its teeth cleaned when it’s eating a high protein diet versus a high carb diet?

Daniel Schulof:

Okay. I don’t know the answer to what is like … No, no, no. When I think about health for my dog, it is about function and avoiding disease in the sense that disease is causing some kind of meat material damage. I don’t view my dog’s bad breath such as it is, as being a reason to bring him to the dentist. I get marketed a lot of dental care for my dog. And I’m constantly confronted with reasons why it’s bad, but I don’t buy into the notion that he needs … I’ve never seen a functional thing. I’m sure there some folks who would tell me that I’m wrong about that. But look, I’ve read the same stuff you’ve read that’s like, carb … I mean, I told you before about difference in how wolves and dogs can digest carbohydrate. Wolves cannot make the enzyme amylase very well. Amylase is the enzyme that you, me and our dogs-

Carole Freeman:

Starch digester. Yeah.

Daniel Schulof:

Right. Starch digester.

Carole Freeman:

Starch digest. I can’t even say it. Starch digestor.

Daniel Schulof:

And where do you get it? You get it primarily in the saliva. And so it’s like, you put a piece of bread in your mouth and you leave it there for a while, it tastes sweet. It’s this starch breaking down into glucose. So think about the implications. I mean, this is keto 101 for all your people. But it’s like in the veterinary nutrition or the doggy world, it’s kind of like, oh yeah, my dog is having a mouthful of sugar all the time, every day. I wonder if that’s good or bad for its teeth. It’s the most obvious thing in the world. And-

Carole Freeman:

Well, I just know for myself that going keto, that it was like my teeth hardly ever felt dirty anymore. Still brush them, but it was like, don’t get cavities, your teeth [crosstalk 00:56:18] don’t have any plaque on them. The plaque just comes from eating carbohydrates. And so when you eat a low carbohydrate diet, your teeth are just really healthy. And so I’ve always wondered about with pets, these $1000 teeth cleaning bills, because you got to go … I can’t even say anything today. [crosstalk 00:56:38] your pet to clean their teeth.

Daniel Schulof:

That’s right.

Carole Freeman:

And that’s just a normal part of taking care of your pet. It’s like, well, if they’re on a low carb diet … just like wild animals, they don’t have toothbrushes, they don’t have dentists in the wild. Why do we-

Daniel Schulof:

It’s just one of these things where it’s like, this happens over and over again in this country and in the developed world these days. An industry takes off and it creates a product or service that’s fantastic for a million ways. In the case of kibble, it’s an amazing product in a million ways. It’s like, it will keep your dog alive. It absolutely will. It’s shelf stable forever. Scoop and serve, super easy. It’s very inexpensive. It’s like, this is a great product. And it becomes, because it’s so great, it becomes a huge industry. And then after it’s a huge, very well established industry, science starts to go, oh God, we didn’t realize it at the time, but it was bad. It does a bunch of bad things. And so then instead of the … you’re not beginning at square one. You start to see all these absurd things like dental care for dogs to address a problem that was never really something that was happening in the first place. And it’s just, yeah. It’s a weird, weird place. The veterinary, yeah, it’s a weird place.

Carole Freeman:

So your book is Dogs, Dog Food, and Dogma. So everyone, go get a copy of that.

Daniel Schulof:

Actually, that’s the answer. If you go to ketonaturalpetfoods.com, I will give you a ebook copy. I won’t send you-

Carole Freeman:

What? Did you hear that? Did you hear that people? Go to ketonaturalpetfoods.com. You can get the ebook for free. Is that what you’re saying?

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah. You can get the ebook for free. I mean, if you ask nicely, I can mail you an author’s copy of it.

Carole Freeman:

Oh. With the signature and everything? I’m only one state away.

Daniel Schulof:

That doesn’t scale. But I mean, the reason that I’m willing to do that is because we also do like … Look, I control the company and the contents of the book. The take home points, if you’re not able to sit through a 400-page book every week, you can read the one page summaries of all the key issues if you go to the same library where you can download the whole book from. And so, there aren’t a great number of places where you can go and become smarter about the evidence surrounding issues that really matter to your pet’s health. I like to think that the science section of our business’ site is one of those places. It’s a lot of free resources there, including yes, free ebook.

Carole Freeman:

And I see currently as of the recording and broadcast of this, that if you go on the website too, there’s a 15% off if you sign up for … Give them your email, you get that. I don’t know [crosstalk 00:59:32]. This isn’t going to be forever on the internet. I don’t know if that’s going to be there forever, but that’s there right now.

Daniel Schulof:

You sign up for our email list at this moment, that is something that we are doing. And we’re just like, there’s no commitment, but we send out … You know it too. When you’re running a small organization, you got to wear a lot of hats. And so I got to wear a lot of hats. But it’s something that I really … I hope you can see from this, is I really enjoy doing, is this type of thing where I’m appearing on somebody else’s show trying to transmit my unique little thing. And being on our email is a really good way to keep up with all that stuff. We do a good job of curating from our specific perspective, the relevant news and information that’s coming out in this [inaudible 01:00:17] for our email list. This is a good way to do it.

Carole Freeman:

Are you doing a subscription yet? Like a monthly-

Daniel Schulof:

Pet food?

Carole Freeman:

Yeah.

Daniel Schulof:

Absolutely. Yeah. Exactly. We have a calculator on the site that’s like, you can tell us five or six things about how much it weighs, how old it is, how active it is, is it obese right now or not. And we calculate exactly how much it needs a day. We ship it to you exactly when you need it so you’ll never run out. Super handy. You can also buy the individual bag as you want. Some folks-

Carole Freeman:

No commitment.

Daniel Schulof:

Some of your listeners who made comments before like, I feed my dog raw meat plus whatever. Some of those kinds of people will often use ketona as a … Raw meat is not always doable. You go camping or something like that, you’re on vacation, it just becomes too hard. That’s a good way, it’s a supplemental thing for them too. So you can buy it by individual bags if you want. Buy it on Amazon, or you can buy it from us directly. Made with love, the mountain west of America.

Carole Freeman:

Made in America. Is that what you said?

Daniel Schulof:

Yes.

Carole Freeman:

Made mountain west?

Daniel Schulof:

Well, look, the dog food capital of the world … I mean, nobody wants to hear about this, but dog food capital of the world is actually in the Great Plains. I’ve always [inaudible 01:01:37] Kansas City to go to like … The factories that make our food have places all throughout the United States. It’s all in the United States. But some of the core stuff is in outside of Kansas City in the sticks. Two hours outside of Kansas city in towns where there’s nothing going on, but dog food. And it’s like, all these companies have their stuff there.

Carole Freeman:

Wow.

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah, I know it seems super weird.

Carole Freeman:

Yeah.

Daniel Schulof:

Oh, no, no, no. It’s another indication that this is essentially a cereal grain company. This is a company that’s like General Mills. They’re just in the middle of a cornfield because that’s the best place. Dog food is that, but it’s made to look a little meatier. Blue Buffalo got acquired by General Mills, which is a cereal company.

Carole Freeman:

So Robin is going to go to the website and get a copy of the book. So Robin, think you can’t wait to read it? [crosstalk 01:02:30].

Daniel Schulof:

You have to phone me if you have questions, Robin.

Carole Freeman:

Well, Daniel, what else? Anything else that you were hoping I would ask about that you want to share with the viewers, listeners?

Daniel Schulof:

Honestly, no. Because we open this next can of worms, maybe my girlfriend is probably going to move out because I need to make dinner for us. But I will tell you this, if you have folks that are listening live or in one of the recorded versions of this, something that is on. If you are a pet owner, reasonably informed about what’s going on in the world of pet food such as it is, there’s an issue that’s gotten … it’s a crossover, become a mainstream issue over the past three years in the veterinary nutrition community. And it’s a dog one, not a cat one. So if you haven’t heard of it, don’t feel bad. But it’s whether grain-free pet foods cause this rare heart disease called dilated cardiomyopathy. And if you-

Carole Freeman:

That sounds like a good scam to get you to keep buying the grain stuff, to me.

Daniel Schulof:

It’s an absurd story. I mean, I am very proud of the work that I’ve done in my book. It took me a really long time. The stuff I have done concerning this story, the original reporting, the stuff where I’ve got the emails that nobody else has that show where it all came is really … It feels like it is … Anytime I explain it to somebody, I go, you’re going to either look at me and be like, this dude is wearing a tin foil hat, until I walk you through everything. And that’s fine because it’s something it takes, this is what I’m saying. It’s like, oh, I can’t do it. If you get enough of a positive response or enough people asking about this question, have me back and I can talk through this stuff because there is a very big story there. And this is something that’s covered in the New York Times, covered in the Washington Post, big main sources news and lot of pet owners that are curious. And there’s a lot to be said next time.

Carole Freeman:

Wow. Well, Daniel, this is so important. I’m so glad you’re here. I love helping humans be healthier. But most of these humans I help have free animals that they love just as much as they love their humans in their life. So this is really important, to get this information out. So I’m so glad that you’re doing this work, I’m so glad you’re on this planet. I’m sorry for your loss, but I’m also glad that you had something that you loved so much that made you do this work. You know what? Christmas present for … I have several family members that have dogs and I’m going to send them a bag of your-

Daniel Schulof:

Let me know.

Carole Freeman:

… your food. They need it.

Daniel Schulof:

Yeah. That’s sweet, that’s great. It’s a big part of the … I love animals, but what really, really, really turns the crank for me is when I have a person … It’s the other side of the issue we’ve described. I don’t have the emotional relationship with your dog you do. And when I talk to a person that’s like, oh my God, this helped me with my dog so much, I’m really thankful for you. That’s the really gratifying feeling for me. So it’s very mirror image.

Carole Freeman:
Wonderful. Wonderful. I’m going to close out this broadcast, but don’t leave because I have a question for you that I want to ask off air, if you don’t mind.

Daniel Schulof:
Okay.

Carole Freeman:
And then the viewers are going to be like, what did she ask?

Daniel Schulof:
Exactly.

Carole Freeman:

Ask in the comments and I’ll tell you later. So thank you everyone for watching live and the recording of this. Up next in coming episodes, I’ve got some special guest comedians coming in. So comedians doing Keto. So hopefully that’ll be fun and entertaining to share their stories with you. Remember, sharing is carrying. Share this episode with a friend, pet lover that’s in your life. And remember, help us grow the show and we will help you shrink. Your pets too. You want slimmer, healthier pets. So that’s what this episode has been about. Thank you, Daniel, from KetoNatural Pet Foods for being here today.

Daniel Schulof:

Thank you for having me. It’s been a real pleasure. It’s just awesome. I love it.

Carole Freeman:

Thanks everyone. We’ll see you next time. Bye.

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